her and watched as she popped open the second one. “Easy there.”
“I’m entitled. You can’t imagine the night I’ve had.”
Actually, he could. But he wasn’t about to tell her that. Pamela’s embarrassment was already easy enough to see. If he told her he’d witnessed her entire humiliation, she’d stalk away from him. Now, after she’d had a drink, she would probably be even more vulnerable than she’d been before! He was thankful he’d been the one to find her after he’d left the party, leaving Peter laid out on the carpet behind him.
Ken flexed his hand, thankful he hadn’t broken any fingers. Whatever bruises or stiffness he had tomorrow would be well worth the satisfaction he’d gotten knocking Peter on his arrogant ass. He hadn’t stuck around to see how long it took the other man to get up. He’d been totally focused on finding Pamela.
She hadn’t been hard to locate. How many places were there in a beachfront hotel for a half-naked female to hide? Certainly not the bar or the restaurant. He’d doubted she’d booked a room. There had been no place she could have possibly concealed any cash, ID or keys in that getup she’d been wearing, so he didn’t imagine she’d hopped into a cab or her car.
Putting himself in her shoes, er, her bare feet, he’d figured the beach was where he’d have gone. He hadn’t been surprised that was where he’d found her. “So, want to talk about it?” He looked back at her, raising a quizzical eyebrow.
She shrugged. “My name’s Pamela Bradford. Tomorrow was supposed to be my wedding day.”
“And what, you and the groom argued over the wedding cake and started throwing icing around?” he said, trying to make her laugh, trying to avoid letting her know that he knew all about the cake incident.
“That’s not so far from the truth,” she muttered glumly.
Ken didn’t know Pamela very well—heck, he didn’t know her at all. But he had three younger sisters. Growing up, all three of them had considered him the representative for every male on the planet, heaping all the praises—but, more often, all the sins—of his sex right on top of his head.
One thing he’d learned—aside from never going near his sister Diana’s chocolate stash around the time of the full moon—was that in moments of emotional crisis, females needed to get things off their chest or they’d explode. Not wanting his boss’s daughter blown to a million bits on a Fort Lauderdale beach, he urged her on. “So tell me all about your wedding plans.”
She snorted. “They’re off!”
“The wedding’s been called off?”
“Well, unofficially, yes. I guess I’ll leave it to Peter to explain to all our guests why the bride couldn’t make it.”
Ken glanced at his watch. “He’s going to have to come up with a reason pretty quick…or will he tell them the truth?”
“That he’s a womanizing jerk who basically accepted a bribe from my father to get me to marry him?”
Ken winced at the anger in her voice. “Guess not.”
Suddenly, without warning, Pamela was spilling out the whole story. Her childhood. Her relationship with her parents. Her dedication to her job, which had her interacting on a daily basis with teenagers the city of Miami seemed disinclined to help. She even told him about her disillusionment with her fiancé.
Ken listened, finally understanding why Pamela would ever have gotten involved with a guy like Peter Weiss. The man had played her like an instrument, using her father’s advice on her likes and dislikes to appeal to her. How could any woman resist a man who agreed with every word she said, who was completely supportive and anticipated her every need?
“Didn’t that get boring? A guy who never said no to you?”
“It wasn’t like that,” she retorted. “There was security in knowing we were so much alike.”
“Sounds like a yawnfest.” Ken shrugged. “Stepford Groom.”
“So what would you know about it?” she retorted, her fist on her hip. “Are you a relationship expert or something?”
“Nope. My relationships have basically blown lately.”
She raised an eyebrow.
“But I do know I would never be able to stand being with a woman who agreed with every word I said!”
“As if that’d ever happen,” she muttered, seeming to forget her own problems for the moment.
“Are you saying I’m difficult to get along with? And here I thought I’d been the soul of cordiality.”
She suddenly looked contrite. “You have. I’m so sorry. You’ve been wonderful, and I don’t even know your name. I didn’t mean to be critical. It’s just that the men in my life have been less than sterling lately.”
Ken knew without her saying it that she spoke more about her father than she did about Peter Weiss. Ken was not surprised to realize she seemed even more devastated by her father’s involvement than she did by Peter’s actions.
“My name’s Ken.”
A wicked grin crossed her face. “My Barbie dolls always preferred G.I. Joe.”
“My G.I. Joe always preferred Wonder Woman,” he retorted without missing a beat.
She laughed out loud for the first time since they’d met on the beach and Ken felt the sand shift under his feet. Odd. But it happened. The ground moved a bit, his breath grew heavy in his lungs, and he couldn’t tear his stare away from her wide, smiling mouth. This was the Pamela he’d longed to meet.
“I once traded my scooter for a G.I. Joe doll. My father caught me playing ‘G.I. Joe beats the crap out of Ken for trying to force Barbie to be a model rather than an astronaut.’”
Ken grinned. “And how did your father react?”
“He flicked my Ken doll’s head so hard it flew off,” she said with a sad smile that segued into a look of pain. “He used to tell me there was nothing a girl couldn’t do.”
Ken moved closer, tempted to take her arm, to stroke a stray wisp of fine, dark hair, dancing in the night ocean breeze, off her smooth brow. Instead, he said softly, “But now he’s let you down?”
She tightened her arms around the front of his jacket, hugging it against her body. “He’s been saying one thing but doing another. Sure, there was nothing I couldn’t do—as long as it was something of which he approved.”
“And you’re sure he helped your fiancé a little bit?”
She snorted a laugh and tossed her head. “A little bit? Good grief, an Olympic coach probably wouldn’t have done as good a job preparing Peter for the Pamela games!”
Her brief spurt of humor fled. Her face was again dark and troubled, and Ken regretted the change. She was thinking about her father, and Ken wondered how she’d ever be able to deal with what she viewed as his betrayal.
Jared Bradford
